Christians, Senators & Planned Parenthood

Sadly both of my U.S. senators from Virginia voted for continued federal funding of Planned Parenthood despite its scandal over trafficking in fetal parts not to mention the over 300,000 abortions it performs every year. One of my Senators is a publicly professed Roman Catholic, a former missionary, who during one campaign ran television ads advertising his Catholic faith as reason for his opposition to capital punishment.

Catholic teaching officially affirms capital punishment although recent Popes have expressed hope that it is no longer necessary. But Catholic teaching unequivocally opposes abortion and of course deplores Planned Parenthood’s sale, supposedly not for profit, of organs from aborted babies.

So why does an outspokenly Catholic office holder not only vote for Planned Parenthood but Tweet boastfully about his support?  

The short answer is that the human heart is perpetually, as John Calvin grimly observed, a “factory of idols” and self delusions, confusing darkness for light, with an endless capacity for self justification and self aggrandizement. Politicians are routinely chided for their prevarications, but their natures are no different from the rest of humanity, and they typically represent their constituencies.

Christians, including politicians, are by intrinsic nature no different from the rest of fallen humanity. Grace received through the instruction and encouragement of the church ideally and hopefully encourages Christians to heed the path of their Savior, which often entails enmity with the world. But in every age Christians, all of us to some extent, succumb to the spirit of the age, acquiescing, or ignoring, or actively abetting the corruptions of our era, because to do otherwise bears an unwanted cost.

Christians supported or abetted slavery, segregation, eugenics and scores of other evils in our nation’s history. In other cultures Christians have been passive or scandalously complicit in vast genocides, as in Rwanda’s 20 years ago, or even more infamously, the cosmic crimes of the Third Reich. Of course, there were some Christians who resisted, often to martyrdom, but their numbers were too few. It’s always tempting and easier to look the other way, seeking after our own interest.

My own Methodist faith tradition notably opposed slavery early on but not before too long began to go mostly silent as the cost became too great in a culture where slavery was economically and socially esteemed. Why cause trouble?

In more recent decades Methodism abandoned Christian teaching about the sanctity of unborn human life, starting in 1970. The chief author of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling was United Methodist. For years United Methodism funded Planned Parenthood through its missions board, although thankfully no longer. United Methodism’s Capitol Hill lobby has been silent about Planned Parenthood’s trafficking in fetal organs.

It’s pleasing sanctimoniously to look down on earlier generations for their sins, but is our current generation morally superior? Or are our sins and willful blind spots just different?  

The good news is that Divine Providence always prevails ultimately. Slavery was ended. So too segregation, eugenics and other injustices. Planned Parenthood will eventually be defunded, and some day, the unborn will regain legal protection and dignity. One hundred years from now, our era will be condemned for its callow indifference. But one hundred years from now, some new social evils will be pervasive.  

Every generation must contend for human dignity and decency in unique ways against a world too much hostile to both. The Devil always has some new designs, but the Lord is busy too, and His plans are always more comprehensive and victorious. Some day, whether in this world, or in the next, the two Senators from Virginia, one Presbyterian and one Catholic, will affirm the sacredness of all human life. But I hope they do so in this world, where fortunately grace abounds undeservedly for us all.